


If We Have to Say Goodbye

by CinnamonrollStark



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man - All Media Types, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Character Death, Character Turned Into a Ghost, Heartbreak, Marvel Universe, Murder, Parent Tony Stark, Peter Parker Dies, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Protective Peter Parker, Sad, Tony Stark Has A Heart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-11
Updated: 2019-04-11
Packaged: 2020-01-11 06:41:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18424989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CinnamonrollStark/pseuds/CinnamonrollStark
Summary: At the loss of Peter, his Peter, his kid, Tony Stark doesn't know what to do with himself. It's all his fault, and the knife was meant for him. Everyone blames him, and he knows it.But Peter isn't quite gone. He's not sure why, because, aren't you supposed to crossover somewhere? Despite the very deadness of his body, Peter Parker isn't quite gone- and he has to find a way to save those that he loves from their worst enemies: themselves.





	1. Chapter 1

There is a subtle comfort in death, a swift and suddenness to its stride. Its soft around the edges, which is, in it's own way, suffocating. 

His hands confusedly find their way to his own abdomen, aware of the pain but not entirely feeling it. He grips the soft skin and his blood quickens as he feels the wetness. Hot, gushing blood, pouring out of him like a tired firehose. Peter pinches the side of his stomach, trying to staunch the flow, but he knows, even as he does it, that it will not work. 

Noises shift and scutter behind him in the convenient store. Broken glass crunches under Mr. Stark's shoes. He sees the man come into view behind weak eyes. He can't focus, can't center in on one exact thing. Except the crying, he can hear that. Maybe he's the one crying, he's not sure. 

He thinks he whispers an apology, but everything is numb and tingling, the edges of his mouth fuzzy like cottonballs. It's the bloodless, and he knows it. Blood pumps out of him so rapidly that he's suprised he's still conscious. He wont be for long. Peter gives up trying to save himself and brings one of his hands to Tony's neck, smearing blood from his jaw to his collarbone as the fingers slowly descend back onto his own chest. His strength has given out. The empty dark embraces him, and he slips away.

But then- then, he doesn't. He does in his own way, an evaporating and a reforming, particles stretching and breaking and forming something entirely new. A new body, which to him, looks quite the same as the one that lays in a pool of blood on the concrete- sans the blood- but soft and painless like a drifting cloud in a clear sky.

Peter takes his first breath in his new body and finds that it doesn't bring him any true feeling. No physical rush of air in lungs, no throbbing pulse at his neck. Not a terrible feeling, but it is strange, new. He's the fullness at the center of something hollow, empty, space taken away and replaced with a thick, blank thing. The terror of that reality brings him instant panic, and he is back in reality. Still away and out of his body, but now, an observer without any real power.

Tony lifts the body in a swift swoop of adrenaline, slinging the limp body across his arms and against his shoulder. He whispers to the dead body as he carries him, "It's okay; you're going to be okay.", and he won't be, because he's already away but not away. Peter tries to reach out and grab him, but Tony passes through him without any effort. 

"Mr. Stark!" He cries, watching his own corpse swing against his mentor's body with a heaviness it never had in life. Tony doesn't hear him and Peter should know this, should understand that he is here but not here, and he shouldn't be. Memories of church and high ceilings, statues of the Virgin Mary and the infant Lord, a promise of Heaven if you tried hard enough. May was never about that lifestyle, but his mother had been. He remembers it clearly and deeply, and wonders if he wasn't a good person, and that is why he has not gone to Heaven.

Tony takes him to the motel across the street, Peter's lifeless limbs swaying with the movement. The kid follows him, and watches as he frantically bangs on one of the doors. It opens, and a woman stands confusedly beyond the threshold. Theres no time to explain, so Tony pushes past her and darts to the bathroom, clinging to Peter's body and hyperventilating. 

"Who is that? Should I call the police?" She screams, terrified. She backs away, fearing that something is wrong with Tony, and for a moment, Peter thinks that she's going to grab some sort of a weapon, but no, it's a phone. She dials 911. "Is he breathing?" She shouts, and there's a pause on Tony's end. Peter follows cautiously the man's footsteps to the restroom.

He's got the body in the shower-bath, water running red around his body. Tony's cleaning the wound, searching for where it starts and where it ends; the largest wound Peter has ever seen. He recoils away from his own corpse. Even had he been taken to the hospital, this is and was a fatal injury. Mr. Stark works, despite this, to save him.

"What's your name?" Asks Tony to the woman, who enters the room with her cellphone in hand. She clicks it off.

"An ambulance is on it's way. I'm Amanda."

"Amanda," Stark orders, "do you have Tampons?" An odd question. Were it not for the situation, Peter would be laughing.

The woman shuffles to her medicine cabinet and pulls out a small box of Tampax Supers. She hands them to Tony, who pulls out a handful and rips them open with his teeth. He plunges the cotton tube out of the tip with the applicator and repeats this with three others, and he inserts them into the wound. 

It almost works for a minute. The blood slows, only a few droplets drain from the laceration down the side of the tub and into the drain. Tony uses the time wisely. He shakily runs a bloody hand across his brow, smearing the stuff all over his skin. 

"A sewing kit. Do you have a sewing kit?"

The woman falters. "I don't,  but I could ask the guy next door."

"Do that!" He commands.

As soon as she leaves, he weakens a bit, a muted scream leaking from the back of his throat. It's the sound a lost child makes when a mother or father slips out of sight. He jolts, then, clambers over the side of the tub and and feels for a pulse. None, which Peter knows and expects, but it breaks his heart all the same to watch this wonderful man fall apart at the edges despite his best efforts. 

"Come on Pete," he ushers, leaning over the tub and shaking his shoulders. Peter watches in agony. 

Compressions start slow and unsure, an inexperienced stand-in paramedic, trying and failing to revive his kid. "Peter," he sobs, heaving over the body as he attempts to resuscitate the boy. "Please don't do this."

"I'm sorry." Peter whispers behind him, wishing that he could do something to help him. And he wants to live, too, but there is some resistant acceptance that he is coming to find in being dead. To reverse it now would change him, leave him differently than he's always been. He is dead, and there is no changing that.

It takes twenty minutes for the ambulance to arrive. It's also the same time Amanda returns with a small sewing kit, hoping and expecting to help save the boy. She stops in the doorway at the sight of Tony Stark, sitting in the wet and bloodied tub, a dead boy with four tampons lodged in his abdomen, limp, wrapped tightly in a shaking embrace.

When the EMTs try to take Peter from him, he refuses to let go. And in truth he's not sure if he ever can.


	2. Funeral for a Legend

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Funeral preparations bring up many emotions.

Tony sits in a greif room, waiting for May. It's small, claustrophobic, and not the place that he wants to have to deliver this kind of news in. Peter is next to him, his body in the morgue, a post-mortem and an autopsy being performed on him this very minute. The boy without a body sets his hand over Tony's and clutches it, knowing it wont make a difference. 

There's a new feeling, to touch, that he hadn't been so keenly aware of before. He feels pain, but it is not his own. And when he presses his own hand against the man's, he finds that it is the source, a white hot burning. It's an emotional pain, but also something more, and he can't determine exactly what it is. Greif, probably. He's felt it before, for his uncle, his parents, but never so deeply peircing and raw. This, he realizes, it not just grief. This is guilt.

The door to the greif room jimmies and Tony stands. "Open up," a woman says on the other side. It's May, but her voice is morfed, distorted. There is a moment of hesitation before Tony opens the door. A burst of air, thick and cold from the hallway. 

Peter's Aunt stands in the middle of the doorframe, florescent light framing her figure. She doesn't move for a solid minute, stiff and still. Bloodshot eyes bear holes through Tony. He wants to hug her or hold her hand or something, anything to take her pain, but she knows. Maybe someone already told her, or maybe she has just read the room.

Peter stands against Tony and holds his hand. He reaches out, and grabs his aunt by the shoulder. He tries to pull them into a hug, and for a moment it works- the two living bodies step towards eachother, breathlessly awaiting some moment of contact, and when it happens, a sob escapes Tony. Peter holds them together. 

The slap is entirely unexpected, to Peter. Tony pulls away, having known this would happen. Another one comes, a hard smack at his shoulders, then his ribs, then his face. His eyes shut, slowly, resigned to the beginning of his punishment. 

"How"  _Slap_ "could,"  _slap_ "you?!" She wails, raining down on him with a weak vengeance. Spit flies from her lips, onto his neck and chest, and she notices it. The blood. Peter's...

May leans against him, her palms on his shoulders. She can't breathe, now, and the floor tips out from under her. "How could you let him die?" She cries, backing away, covering her mouth with a gasp. "You were supposed to - supposed to take care of him. I let him go to you and you let him just  _die._ "

She's not wrong. Tony could've done something sooner, could've pushed the kid out of the way, could've... he could've done something, and he had just slacked off at the worst possible time. 

"I'm sorry," he says, tears spilling down the sides of his cheeks. They get trapped in the creases of his crumpled face, and it elicits another punch to the chest.

"You don't get to cry," she wails. "It's my turn to grieve. He's my boy, mine. You got him into this."

Peter wants to correct her. It's too much, far too much to see before him. He has no control, no ability to change the outcomes of their pain. He's out the door with no problem, no cause or effect, and they do not notice his absence. Even as he's out of the room, he can hear sobbing, and he's not sure if it's one or both of them.

~

Wet cloths run across grey skin, leaving smeared streaks and spots. His body is so young and lean, and it takes up little space on the flat metal table. He's already been cut open, a Y-shaped incision loosely stitched up across his chest and abdomen. A standard autopsy scar. 

He's been moved to a funeral home. May is struggling, somewhere, to plan his viewing and funeral, and Tony handles the finances. He's decided that, until something blows over, he can't be around the two of them. He can't bare to watch them fight.

The mortician sits on a stool and washes him with a solemn expression on her face. She's sort of young, maybe late twenties, chesnut brown hair tied up in a ponytail. Her glasses rest on the turned up tip of her nose. "I'm sorry," she whispers.

Peter stands behind her and watches as she wipes his body free of blood. "It's okay," he responds. "It doesn't hurt."

When she's done, she moves on to a pair of scissors. Peter flinches, knowing what's coming. It's not going to hurt, and he knows that, but it still feels wrong that he should be watching this.

The mortician cuts the thin, loose stitches that loop around his autopsy scar. When it's done, she pulls the thread and grabs the sides of his belly with gloved hands and pulls the skin at its sides, revealing multiple biohazard bags of organs in his chest cavity. She grabs them by the knotted tops and removes them, setting them gently in a waste removal bin. Maybe they will be cremated, he's not sure, but it's odd to know that he won't be buried with his heart, lungs, brain. 

What is left of him is an empty capsule. There are still remaining fluids in him, which she drains through his veins, and replaces with embalming fluids through his arteries. It's an interesting process, but it makes him squirm all over.

And, to his suprise, the trash bin isn't a trash bin at all. It's just a regular old bucket, which the mortician retrieves the bags of organs from after this process is finished. Now, she aspirates his organs, draining blood and fluids from them until they are dry. She replaces them carefully.

This process takes place over about two days. It is interesting and horrifying and fascinating and everything else he could possibly feel. What she is left with, in the end, is a sewn-up, stuffed, chemical infused puppet of what he once was. His body is grey and his feet stick up in an awkward, stiff position. 

Then comes the application of makeup, a soft shade of beige, which she applies across his face, neck, hands, and feet. The rest will be covered by a suit, he guesses. A dusting of setting powder. It is all thickly applied, and it takes him back to that one time he let MJ dressed and dip him up in drag. The memory stings as the mortician beautifies him. 

Eyeshadow, but just barely, a slight tanning of the lids so he doesn't look so pale. A bit of bronzer under the cheekbones. Light blush. An eyebrow penciling. No eyeliner or highlight, which is a little disappointing, because it would be kind of cool to be buried in drag. She finishes his face off with a neutral lipstick. His lips are sewn together, and pouted, just slightly. He touches his own, dead face, and is suprised at just how cold it is.

But it feels like him, albiet, a waxy, mannequin of him, but it's interesting. As he steps closer, it's easier to recognize the inconsistencies in the skin, how it's not exactly what it used to be. It's a putty face, a wax figure. This is not Peter Parker. And it hits him, just now, how his body was never really him, and now that he's gone, it is no different than it was before. The only thing missing is his personality, which he wears now. It hurts, just a bit, knowing no one will ever really see it. 

~

Peter finds Tony, layer, sitting in his car in the parking lot. He's working on funeral expenses, sending May photographs of caskets and asking, "This one?" To which she replies, "I can't deal with this. You pick one."

The kid hops into the passenger seat and takes a long look at him. Peter has never truly seen a broken person before, but this is what he pictures it would look like. Bleary, red eyes, searching for why's and how's where there are none. Skin, rough and rubbed off at the sides of nose and eyes, from so many tears. Hair, unbrushed. Tony's eyes run over him for a moment, and Peter mistakes it for recognition. A rush of energy where his heart used to be; an echo of something born and died with, but no longer there. 

But it isn't. Tony can't see him and probably never will. He goes back to looking at coffins on his phone. 

"I like the silver one," Peter jokes. Its gaudy and awful.

"I bet you'd want that one." Tony laughs. Peter's gaze falls on him, and he wishes this were more than a coincidence of thought.

"You can't hear me, can you?" He asks. Tony scrolls through the coffins. "Because I'm sure you can't but... I'm okay, Tony. I'm not mad at you."

He stops, looks around. Can he hear him? Does he know that-

Tony collapses into uncontrollable sobs against the steering wheel. His body presses against the car horn, and the sound is loud and jarring to a couple who passes by outside. He's loud and unrestrained, weeping in the parking lot of a funeral home. Peter sets a hand on his back and hugs onto him as he dissolves over funeral arrangements. 

"It's not fair," bawls Tony. Peter leans the side of his head against Mr. Stark's back and listens to the sharp and reckless inhalations of his breakdown.

"No," agrees Peter. 

"It's not."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OKAY I KNOW THIS IS SAD- but I kind of love it. Its theraputic in a weird way.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope yall enjoy it! Its gonna be an emotional ride, believe you me.


End file.
